Astronomy / Space It's Black, Tiny and Far Away. How Was Neptune's 'Phoenix' Moon Found?

[Manticore]

In the dark, violent outer reaches of our solar system, orbiting Neptune’s vast and featureless blue bulk and trapped for millennia in a cycle of destruction and rebirth, a tiny moon has been hiding.


Earth-bound observers, staring at Neptune with telescopes, missed it. The Hubble space telescope missed it. And when Voyager 2 flew past Neptune in 1989 she missed it as well.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-...une-s-phoenix-moon-found-20190220-p50z11.html

 

[Caramel Clown]

Would be interesting to know how they know when it was formed, and that it's been hit 9 times. I assume they are educated guesses, but still... those are some precise numbers. Wonder what kind of data they have to make such statements.